


What Were You Raised By Wolves?

by shirogiku



Category: Black Sails
Genre: All The Love For Max, Angst and Humor, Civilisation vs Savagery, F/F, F/M, Male-Female Friendship, Nassau, Post-Season/Series 03
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-20
Updated: 2016-07-20
Packaged: 2018-07-25 16:31:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,320
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7539844
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shirogiku/pseuds/shirogiku
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Based on <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/users/DreamingPagan">DreamingPagan</a>'s prompt: Eleanor learns the full story of Thomas and Miranda from Rogers, of all people.</p><p>(And Max is there to talk about it.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	What Were You Raised By Wolves?

**Author's Note:**

  * For [DreamingPagan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DreamingPagan/gifts).



> The title is borrowed from Vera Brosgol's wonderful comic by the same name, check it out :)

* * *

 

“ _A Governor’s Ball_?” It was one of those pervasive moments when Eleanor had to wonder whether all this wasn’t just a fever dream and if there was any chance of her waking up in the old Nassau. _Her_ Nassau.

Yank her chain, would he?

“I am, as you know, a Governor.” He only repeated that what, ten times a day or so? “And, as such, I must set a certain example and maintain certain standards, whether I like it or not.”

“In the middle of the bloody war?”

Every damn time that she thought she had finally found a smart man, something like this happened.

“ _Especially_ in the middle of the bloody war, my dear. Even if we haven’t got enough cannons, we’ll bloody well have enough balls.”

She didn’t bat an eyelash at the latter. If boosting the island’s morale was what he was after ( _ha_ ), then he needed to go no further than handing out some free rum. It had always worked out for her, more or less.

“But who on earth is going to attend it?”

“Planters, merchants,” he gestured around vaguely, “and those bright young men who have been languishing with nothing better to do since their arrival.” Ah, so _that_ was what this was about - the whiny rich brats. “I’ll leave the guest list to you and Max.” Amazing. “I don’t imagine this place has seen many social functions since the Rosario Raid.”

And thank you very much for that reminder. It was as if he was done mapping out her nerves and now was trying to get on every single one.

“Shall I put Flint down as ‘unconfirmed’?” she deadpanned.

He chuckled, glancing out of the window. “That depends. Would he come?”

“You never know.”

For a while, the whole Governor’s prerogative nonsense was put aside, but then he got up from his desk again, with his hand held out for her. “Most importantly, can you dance?”

“I wasn’t raised by wolves.” She had two feet, didn’t she?

He smiled. “Sometimes, it _is_ awfully hard to tell.”

Was that supposed to be a compliment? “Don’t do that.” He protested that he wasn’t doing anything inappropriate, at the moment. “You’re terrible at compliments.”

“Ah.”

“And there’s no music.”

“I can count.” He took that opportunity to ask who had taught her.

“To count? Nassau’s ill-begotten riches, of course. Those used to be very vocal about being counted, let me tell you.”

Another chuckle. “And to dance?”

“My parents,” she lied.

_By the third time she and Flint came near and bumped into each other’s every possible and impossible hard angle - right before stomping on each other’s feet - it became clear that their lack of coordination had more to do with James’s teaching skills than with the exact amount of gin left in the bottle._

_“Oh my fucking god, you’re the worst teacher ever!” she told him gleefully. “If I were actually paying you for the lesson, I’d literally set you on fire.”_

_He laughed. “I never said I was any good!” Suddenly, the grin fell away. “Tho- someone else was the real tutor.”_

Back in the present, Rogers was still talking as they braved their basic steps, “Did you really not know anything about Captain Flint’s past?”

She tensed. “I wasn’t interested in his past, only in what his presence meant for Nassau’s future.”

Rogers shook his head at what he perceived as such an obvious oversight. “But surely you must have noticed his bearing? How much he stood out?”

Well, to be fair, who hadn’t? “The Royal Navy spits out all sorts. Why?”

Rogers frowned. “This isn’t like you, Eleanor.”

“Isn’t it, though? I am, as _you_ know, a busy woman. He wasn’t bringing any more Jacobite agendas to my doorstep, and that was good enough for me.”

Rogers stopped, then moved back to his desk. “He did have a political agenda once. He was the Admiralty’s liaison to Lord Hamilton, whom I greatly admire.”

“The father or the son?”

“The son, of course. Would you like to hear the full story now? Or will you tell me that vengeance is vengeance, regardless of its causes?”

‘Vengeance’ was such a loaded, overinflated word. She leaned against the desk. “Surprise me.” When Rogers got like this, there was no shutting him up.

He started with the official story - the affair between the Barlow woman and Lieutenant James McGraw - but then he veered into the realm of his own wild conjectures: something rather more complicated had been going on between the trio.

She rolled her eyes. “I didn’t know you liked dirty gossip so much.”

“Thomas Hamilton was a visionary.” Rogers sounded suspiciously like a schoolboy going on and on about his childhood hero. “Had he known to bide his time, it would have been him standing here, in this office, and myself still on the rocks. But the line between a visionary and a madman is fixed in place by those in power, and really, if he was such a deviant politically, is it such a stretch to imagine the same applying to his private life?”

She felt sick, plain and simple. “I thought you said you admired him. This sounds more like demonising him.”

“And it _would_ explain Flint’s monstrous rage, would it not?”

Rogers must be so fucking pleased with himself for having figured it all out.

Stepping onto the balcony after her, he said: “I have upset you.” He gave her an apologetic look. “Civilisation, you’ll find, comes at its own price.”

“And some don’t get any better terms, is that it?” Her eyes were on their poorly defended harbour.

Was he still talking about Flint, or was it actually about her and Max? And who had been running her mouth this time, that old hag who just wouldn’t sink?

“Yes,” was Rogers’s reply as he covered Eleanor’s hand with his. “Pioneers pay that price first of all. Civilisation is really just a global social contract. Breaking _any_ contract must have its consequences, and it’s not us who have drawn up this one.”

So James had lost more than she had ever known him to lose. So what. She, too, had lost things. A happy childhood, a mother who loved her, a father who _saw_ her.

There was no right side in this war between them: it was wrong against wrong, chaos and fire and blood against an eventual peace. She could only hope that for some of them, there _would_ be peace at the end.

 

* * *

 

“So,” she said. “What do you think?”

Max glanced at the guest list again. “This is a terrible idea. You know it as well as I do.”

“Not about the fucking dinner-party, Max.” It was such a relief to talk freely around someone. And of course it had to be Max, always fucking Max. “About that old snake Mrs. Mapleton. And what Rogers said about Flint.”

Max looked at Eleanor. “I always knew that, about Flint.” Eleanor stared at her. “Such terrible rage can only be born out of terrible love.”

Eleanor froze, flashing back to how Max had looked at her on that bridge between their halves of the town. She had not realised it at the time, but in that moment, Max would have handed her over to the highest bidder and _smiled_.

But now, now they were the same, weren’t they? Max had also lost everything but her own ambitions. She understood.

“I have never loved like that,” Eleanor admitted.

“I know.”

“Not even this place.”

“ _Oui_.”

She rose and walked over to the window. “But you don’t need love to become a monster.”

She felt Max’s arm wrap around her, jealous of the peace that it was once supposed to bring her and never had done. “ _We_ are not monsters, Eleanor. Monsters are those who write the rules that make us so.”

Eleanor glanced at her. “So how do we outsmart them?”


End file.
